Beta testing of Mac OS X 10.6.3 began in early January, and Apple carried out testing with a number of private betas issued to its developer community over the last few months.

The last major update to Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6.2, came last November, when Apple addressed a guest account bug that could result in a user's account data being accidentally deleted. The update also added native support for the company's new multi-touch Magic Mouse.

Apple on Monday also issued a more extensive list of features and updates in Mac OS X 10.6.3. The detailed information follows:

General operating system fixes and improvements provided for:

performance of Logic Pro 9 and Main Stage 2 when running in 64-bit mode.

an issue in which the Finder reports a -36 error when copying directories to a drive formatted as FAT32.

reliability of photo screen savers.

compatibility issues with OpenGL-based applications.

an issue in which shadows in PDF of Aperture book are black instead of gray.

an issue in which the microphone level in iChat may not increase the volume after reducing it to prevent a feedback event.

the reliability of certain third-party USB devices.

the Accounts preference pane can now limit login to members of groups hosted by a non-Apple directory service, such as Active Directory.

DNS server ordering as specified in Network Preferences and DNS reliability. For details about how Mac OS X v10.6 handles unresponsive DNS servers, see this article.

the reliability and compatibility of QuickTime X.

Data Collection: Mac OS X v10.6.3 can collect diagnostic and usage information from your Mac and send it to Apple for analysis automatically. The information is only collected with your explicit consent, and is submitted anonymously to Apple.